“Dill!” Rachel yanked him aside.
Carnival attacked.
She came so fast, Rachel barely saw her move. One heartbeat the assassin was upright, the next she was thrown across the Sanctum with brutal force. She slid twenty feet on her back and came to a halt inches from the wall. The bamboo tube rolled away into the shadows.
“I said leave her!” Dill swiped at the scarred angel.
Carnival diverted his blow without taking her eyes off Rachel. She caught the blunt blade in her fist, jerked it aside, and then punched Dill in the face. He dropped like a puppet whose strings had been severed. Wings thundering, Carnival came after the assassin again.
Rachel leapt to her feet, unsheathed her sword. She had to act now, while there was still some light in the Sanctum. She ran at her adversary, swung the blade up over her shoulder, feigned a down-cut…
Carnival moved to intercept the sword.
With her bare hands…? She thinks she’s that fast? Shit, she is that fast. But Rachel had no intention of attacking with her blade just yet. At the last moment, she slid both legs forward and dropped onto her back on the polished marble floor, turning her charge into a reckless slide. Carnival recoiled from the manoeuvre, but too late. The Spine assassin collided with the angel, taking Carnival’s legs out from under her.
It was an unorthodox tactic, but effective. Carnival tumbled over head first, wings thrashing, as Rachel skidded to a halt six feet beyond. Great, but she won’t let me attempt that one again. The assassin rolled over onto her stomach, and slipped her loaded blowpipe from her belt. Still lying on the floor, she put the weapon to her lips, and blew.
Somehow, the scarred angel had landed on her feet. She spun around, snatching the poisoned dart from the air with appalling ease. Then she put the blunt end of the needle-like missile in her mouth, and sneered. Now she advanced again, pounding her wings, chewing on the dart as if it was a toothpick. “You think you can poison me, Spine?” she growled. “What else have you got? Throwing knives? Acid powders? Are you too scared to use your sword?”
Dill was crawling on his hands and knees beside Carnival, reaching up to her, wheezing. “The angelwine…I’ll tell you…where it is. The Church no longer has it…. Just leave her…please.”
Abruptly the gale blowing through the Sanctum died. Carnival spat out the dart, grabbed Dill’s throat, and hoisted him upright. “Tell me!” she hissed.
Dill gasped, “It’s…lost.”
“Where?”
“The abyss…Devon’s syringe fell…”
She released him abruptly.
Dill crumpled to the floor.
Only a scattered handful of candles remained lit. Webs of shadow from the iron-hedged walls shivered around Carnival. Rachel returned the blowpipe to her belt, and got shakily to her feet. Adjunct Crumb still stood at the lectern, his face ashen.
Then the scarred angel cracked her wings apart and rose into the air. Shadows towered behind her, dark and huge as thunderclouds. For a long moment, she stared hard into the abyss, candle flames glittering in her eyes. With a snarl, she drew her wings back in.
“No!” Fogwill cried. “Listen to me!”
Carnival plunged into the void.
“Gods!” Fogwill rushed to the door and pulled frantically at a bell cord. “A disaster, a disaster. If she finds that syringe we have nothing. Why did you tell her, Dill? Why?”
Rachel rubbed her shoulder and winced. “What the hell does it matter anyway? Let her have her goddamn potion.”
At that moment Captain Clay and Mark Hael burst into the Sanctum. Rachel’s brother surveyed the scene. “What happened? Where is she?”
Fogwill explained.
“Last we’ll see of her,” Clay said. “Good riddance.”
The Adjunct kept pacing this way and that in nervous circles. He dragged his hands over his scalp repeatedly, as though he still had hair. “No,” he protested. “We have to find the syringe before she does. It’s all we have left now!” He stopped pacing. “Dill, you have to go—you have to stop her, now, before it’s too late.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Rachel said.
But the fat priest ignored her. Pacing again, while his hands traced patterns in the air before him like jewelled butterflies, he muttered to himself, “She won’t kill him. She didn’t harm him before. He’ll be safe while he’s unarmed.”
“You’d send him to Deep, unarmed?” Rachel said, shocked.
“He’ll need light,” Fogwill said, “a storm lantern.” He turned to Clay. “Fetch a lamp.”
Clay hesitated.
“A lamp! He needs a lamp.”
The temple guard captain nodded, then left the Sanctum.
Rachel placed a hand on Dill’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this,” she said, then to Fogwill, “You can’t make him do this. You’ll send him to his death!”
The Adjunct’s pace faltered. “I don’t have any choice!” he snapped. As he gazed at her, Rachel saw the truth of it in the ghostly pallor of his skin, the pleading, pain-filled eyes, the bitter, crushing weight of his decision etched into every line of his face.
God, Fogwill, you’re suffering. But why? What can’t you tell us?
But his look had been enough to convince her. “All right,” she said. She marched over to the rim of the aperture. “If he has to go down there, then I’ll go with him.”
Mark Hael snorted. “Been learning to fly, dear sister?”
“He can carry me.” She peered into the darkness, then swung to face Dill. “You’re strong enough.”
Dill lowered his sword until the tip of the blade touched the floor. The gold hand guard gleamed dully in the candlelight. Somehow it was dented. “Rachel,” he said, “I don’t know.. I can’t…”
“You can,” she said.
“Can what?” Captain Clay had returned with a storm lantern, a frown creasing his grizzled brow.
“My little sister insists she wants to go with him,” Mark Hael explained.
“Here, lad,” Clay’s expression remained grave as he placed the storm lantern in Dill’s free hand, closing the angel’s fingers around the handle. “It’s well full of oil—the best we have. Burns bright. There’s extra wick and flints stored in the base of it too, case you need them.”
Dill’s wings slumped. He stared at the lantern for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet Rachel’s. They glowed whiter than she’d ever seen before.
“I’ll protect you, Dill,” she whispered. “I promise.”
“Rachel, this is insane.” Her brother strode towards her. “We don’t have time for this.”
Her eyes held Dill’s. “I trust you,” she said. “Catch me.”
“Rachel!” Mark Hael lunged for her, too late.
She had stepped back and disappeared into the abyss.
A brittle silence. Dill’s heart momentarily ceased to beat. Adjunct Crumb froze. Mark Hael and Captain Clay did the same. No one moved.
And then a shriek of joy came from the depths. “The bitch nearly hit me.” Carnival’s laughter echoed through the high chamber.
Suddenly Dill felt himself being wrenched forward. The aeronaut commander had grabbed his chain mail and was forcing him towards the edge. “Help her,” he said. “Go!”
Dill struggled against the man’s grip, his heels slipping on the polished floor. “No, I…”
But Mark Hael dragged him forward effortlessly. “You must.”
The dark void drew closer, utterly cold, utterly dead.
“Please.” The angel’s eyes were now blazing white. He would have screamed but he couldn’t find enough air in his lungs to expel. His wings lashed uselessly, too weak to halt his progress towards that terrible darkness. His hands were flailing, both lantern and sword swinging wildly.
They were standing now over the edge. The abyss reached up to him, a rising well where every one of Dill’s nightmares lurked. It sapped the last of his strength, seemed to drain his life away. His knees buckled. His stomach lu
rched. “I can’t,” he protested feebly.
“Save her!” Mark Hael yelled, and shook him.
Dill stared into the abyss. She was lost to him and he hated her for it. He hated her because there was nothing he could do to help her. He knew that if he stepped into that darkness he would die. The void below was everything and nothing: an emptiness that encompassed his whole life. It would consume him utterly. How far could Rachel have already fallen? Did it matter? He could not hope to save her. He was weak, clumsy, and foolish, a liar, a betrayer, and a coward—the antithesis of everything an archon should be. He was nothing.
Yet she trusted him.
Dill stepped into the darkness.
PART THREE
WAR
23
THE ABYSS
BLACKTHRONE ROSE IN layers of jagged escarpments and wrinkled gullies, gleaming hot and blistered in the sun. Veins of yellow and green trickled around scattered glints of crystal. The quarry at the base of its southern slope had bitten deeply into the mountain itself, opening a gaping crescent of metal cliffs. House-sized boulders and hills of scree broke against the base of the grinning rock, but they were like so many pebbles and mounds of grit in the shadow of the Tooth.
The Tooth towered over the quarry. Yellow streaks marred its smooth white hull. Sand drifts a hundred feet high smothered the base of one side and partially obscured the river-wide trails in the packed earth behind. A dusty scoop like an enormous jawbone jutted from the front, beneath rows of cutting wheels on retracted mandibles. High above the cutters a strip of windows flashed violently, and higher still blackened funnels punched up from the roof, wrapped in gantries and stairwells.
Devon eased the ship’s wheel around. “Now, that,” he said, “is one big tooth.”
Presbyter Sypes’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again. He resumed snoring.
Signs of habitation were evident below. Work had been done to clear some of the sand around the vast machine, to give access to the shade below the hull. Trails led up the surrounding sand drifts and disappeared into a line of rag-covered holes a quarter of the way up one side. Rope ladders hung from holes higher up, but the Heshette themselves were keeping out of sight. Devon knew better than to assume that they were unaware of the warship’s presence.
He spoke into a trumpet on the control deck. “Purge the ribs, Angus, slowly. We’re going down.”
After a moment a hiss issued from the envelope overhead and the Birkita began to descend.
Devon spun the wheel to bring the warship round in a circle above the quarry. A clutter of stretched-hide roofs and poles came into view, packing the shade between the far side of the Tooth and the cliff wall. Animal tracks pocked muddy earth around them.
A spring? Of course, Blackthrone traps the rain.
But still nothing grew in the poisonous earth. The machine was just a temporary home to the Heshette and their animals, a harsh oasis between the seasonal plains around Dalamoor and the bandit villages west of the Coyle.
The warship descended, and Devon swung her away from the cliffs to bring them back around the Tooth’s crown.
“More lift, Angus,” he said into the trumpet.
Another hiss. They dropped two fathoms.
“I said lift, man. Not purge. Lift.” Devon’s voice was steady, but the vibrations from the engine shook his hand on the wheel. The quarry floor unfolded below, rose quickly to meet them.
The cliffs loomed closer. Devon throttled the starboard propeller and wrenched the rudder hard to port. The warship rolled slightly and began to nose away from the rock. Cables pinged overhead.
“Lift, Angus.”
Angus’s voice came through another trumpet. “Drop dead.”
“Unlikely,” Devon said. “I would walk free from any crash. This course of action will do nothing but kill you and the priest.”
A barrage of tinny obscenities erupted from the engine-room trumpet. Another hiss, and suddenly they were dropping even faster.
Damn him to hell.
The ground came up at them. Devon nudged the front of the envelope away from the cliffs. Through the portside windows he saw massive funnels rising quickly past. They were now between the Tooth and the rock face, falling too quickly to manoeuvre safely past the huge machine.
“Lift, Angus, or you’ll never see another drop of serum.”
Angus did not reply. Devon swung the wheel hard to starboard. He slammed both elevator levers back, then cranked the propellers full.
Engines rumbled, then roared. The bridge shuddered. To port, the shadowed hull of the Tooth rushed upwards. Cliffs hemmed them in to starboard. Clouds of dust billowed through the front ducts. Devon coughed and blinked furiously, trying to see through the bridge windows. The ground was close, rising. He felt the bridge tilt.
“Last chance, Angus,” he shouted. It might have been into the wrong trumpet—he didn’t look, didn’t care. They were going to crash. He had to level the ship. He cut the propellers, forced the elevator controls forward.
Dust choked the forward view, a storm caught between two rising walls, dull white on one side; sharp, ragged rock on the other.
A heavy grinding sound from behind. A loud crack. Ropes fretted, twanged. Wood snapped, splintered, and they hit the ground with a bone-breaking crunch.
Devon’s chin smacked hard against the wheel. The bridge windows shattered in an explosion of glass and dust.
The warship settled with a series of long creaks and groans. The gondola listed to one side, and came to rest with a final hiss.
Devon cut the engines and turned to check on the Presbyter. Sypes’s chair had slid across the floor and rested against one wall, but the old man was still slumped there, snoring lightly.
“Incredible,” Devon muttered.
Bleating noises forced his attention back outside. Through the falling dust he saw goats bucking and kicking among piles of broken wood and torn hide. Chickens fluttered and squawked, scattered feathers everywhere. The Birkita had landed on the Heshette animal pens. A cockerel hopped through the bridge window onto the control deck and cocked its head at him.
“Bother,” Devon said. He shook Sypes awake.
The Presbyter blinked and rubbed his eyes, then squinted at the cockerel. “Good landing?”
“We’re down, aren’t we?”
“Not the best start for your proposed alliance,” Sypes said. “I urge you reconsider. The Heshette will murder us on sight for this.”
Devon grunted, picked up his bag of poisons, and left to survey the damage. Angus, if he was still alive, could stay where he was and rot.
Extricating himself from the wreckage proved to be a lengthy process. Devon picked his way through the shattered pens, dragging aside sun-bleached poles to clear a path. Frightened goats clambered over each other as they struggled to escape, bleating incessantly.
The Birkita was in poor shape. The gondola listed at a shallow angle. Splinters of teak formed a jagged line where the aft deck had buckled. The starboard propeller hung loose and the port one had sheared, a foot shorter on both blades where it had collided with an outcrop of rock. Three of the four main aether-lights were smashed. But, incredibly, the envelope was still intact. It rested against the hull of the Tooth, hardly reaching an eighth of the way up the giant machine.
The Tooth rose like a pale citadel, its sheer walls tapering to scorched funnels high above. Underneath, rows and rows of massive wheels sat in shadowed tracks among piles of crushed rock. Fine lines had been etched into the hull in endless whorls and curls.
Some sort of ceramic? Three thousand years and there is hardly a mark on it. Light too, or the whole thing would sink into the desert. The refuse of a civilization so much more advanced than our own, abandoned here like a broken shovel.
Devon walked the entire length of the machine, looking for a pattern in its hull etchings, some clue as to how it had been assembled. He was so caught up in his observations that when he reached the scoop at the front he was startled to
find the Heshette there waiting for him.
They looked like figures sculpted from sand. Sun-faded gabardines hung shapelessly about them. Dust-coloured scarves wrapped their faces. A dozen men assembled in the sunshine beyond the shadow of the Tooth, mostly armed with hunting bows and spears, but there were other weapons: clubs, bone axes, long knives, hooked swords, and bandit rapiers—weapons scavenged from a hundred conflicts.
Only the shaman stood out from the group. His long beard hung below the folds of his scarf like a frayed and knotted rope adorned with feather and bone fetishes. In one gnarled fist he clutched a bleached wood staff as tall as himself.
This is the man who shapes the minds of the tribe, who fuels their hatred. This is the man I need to convince.
The tribesmen were approaching. Devon flexed his shoulders, squared his jaw, and went to meet them. This was going to be difficult. And, he suspected, it was going to hurt.
After a dozen steps he found out just how much.
There was no parley, no negotiation, no trade of insults. There was only pain.
An axe slammed into his chest. Devon landed on his back.
The man who’d thrown the axe didn’t shout or run. He didn’t break his stride. The scarf around his head hid whatever expression of hate or satisfaction he wore.
Devon pressed fingers to his chest and they came away bloody. He wrenched the axe free and stared in disbelief at the blood glistening on the sharpened-bone blade. Then he struggled to his knees. “Now look here,” he said.
None of the Heshette uttered a word. But the weapons came hard and fast.
A stone glanced off Devon’s temple. A second axe drove high into his shoulder and opened half his neck. Arrows hissed. One struck his thigh, another tore a strip from his cheek, another pierced his stomach, another ripped through his ear, another grazed his scalp, another thumped into his lung. Something heavy smacked against his skull and the world reeled.
Devon was confused. He wanted to shout Stop, but a second stone struck him clean on the forehead. As he crumpled, the Tooth’s massive hull slid across his vision like a dirty, bone-coloured sky.